Grenada - The Voyage and the Angst Continue

Vega
Hugh and Annie
Mon 22 Aug 2016 17:56
12:0.13N 61:43.29W
After 8 hectic weeks we are back in the sun and acclimatising to the daily 30 degree temperature. The contrast with the UK in terms of both climate and way of life is huge and does take a bit of adjustment. One consequence of sailing in legs with trips home in between is the sheer logistics of organising affairs at home, for the boat and the next leg, never mind spending enough time with friends and family. We fell short on the latter but now that we have sorted out the house with new tenants on a three year tenancy, promise to try and do better when we get back in November.
For many of us at or around retirement life has been good - full and secure employment, comfortable salaries and conditions of employment, good pensions. We have been aware that our children are not having such an easy time and slightly bemused that pensioners have been largely shielded from fiscal policy in response to the economic downturn whilst the young and the less well off in employment have taken the brunt of the cuts. I was also aware from six years of no salary increase at a time when inflation was running at around 4%, from tax increases, job losses and from the wholesale destruction of pension arrangements that things were changing significantly for the worse for most of us. Free market economics have been allowed to dominate our lives more than politics these days and, as I have remarked upon previously, it has been shocking to witness the extent to which wealth has been draining from the majority in favour of the few. Time to make a stand! So, imagine my relief to know that all this is now to change for the better as we begin our drift back to that English pre EU golden age of the 1950’s. The countryside will be greener and full of flowers again, summers will be warm and sunny. Full employment will return as we trade with our resurgent Empire. The Royal Navy with its nuclear submarines will keep the world a safer place and protect our worldwide trading interests. Johnny Foreigner across the channel will be desperate to protect his trade with us by granting us free access to the Single Market without any of those petty rules, regulations and movement of people that the Norwegians and Swiss have been so silly to accept. Our borders will be secure again and there will be a passionate rise of jingoistic fervour to make us forget that we have more mixed blood as a population than most. All those appalling benefits scroungers that cost the taxpayer and business so much to support can look forward instead to a new era of philanthropy from the Sir Philip Green et al charitable foundations that will be such a worthy outlet for all that hard earned cash and reap yet more gongs from the ever grateful establishment. And of course a few of us can share in all this success by sending our children to the new swathe of grammar schools and join our privately educated betters who run our institutions and dominate public life. Phew, all is well with the world!
You would think that coming over here again would be the perfect escape from the wanton self destruction that the UK is inflicting upon itself. To a point it is - until we come across people like the German academics who crossed the Atlantic at a similar time to us but are keener to discuss the referendum with a mixture of amusement and bemusement. My anguish rapidly surfaces, remaining as a permanent undercurrent in the back of my mind. The little Englanders have been carping about the EU for the last 40 years but now that we have voted to come out (within a week of commemorating the Battle of the Somme, it is completely farcical) the remainers are told "thats it, Brexit means Brexit, shut up and get on with it". When people begin to understand exactly what Brexit really implies it will be the end of any remaining credibility for our parliamentary democracy if the final terms or even the decision itself are not subject to proper parliamentary debate and a vote.
From which we will move onto more nautical themes concerning hurricanes, stars and birds……………...